‘I have my points. But you did not bring me out here to point those out.’
‘I did not. It’s the Mr Hyde side – oh, I don’t want to lecture but I dislike that side, it hurts me and it baffles me. That a man so physically kind can in other ways be so cold, detached, uncaring to the point of not being quite human.’
‘Oh, dear. Or, as Jamie would put it, I say, I say.’
‘It’s true. In order to gain your own ends, you can be – you are – indifferent to people’s feelings to the point of cruelty.’
‘Lorraine?’
‘Yes. Lorraine.’
‘Well, well. I thought it was axiomatic that two lovely ladies automatically disliked each other.’
She seized his upper arms. ‘Don’t change the subject.’
‘I must tell Alex about this.’
Tell him what?’ she said warily.
‘He thinks you detest one another.’
‘Tell Alex he’s a fool. She’s a lovely person. And you are tearing her to pieces.’
Petersen nodded. ‘She’s being torn to pieces all right. But I’m not the person who’s doing the tearing.’
She looked closely at him, her eyes moving from one of his to the other, as if hoping that would help her find the truth. Then who is?’
‘If I told you, you’d just go and tell her.’ She said nothing, just kept up her intense scrutiny of his face. ‘She knows who is. But I don’t want her to think that it’s public knowledge
She looked away. ‘Two things. Maybe, deep down, you do have some finer feelings after all.’ She looked at his eyes again and half-smiled. ‘And you don’t trust me.’
‘I’d like to.’
‘Try.’
‘She’s a good, honest, patriotic British citizen and she’s working for the Italian secret service, specifically for Major Cipriano and she may well be responsible, however indirectly, for the deaths of an untold number of my fellow countrymen.’
‘I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!’ Her eyes were wide and full of horror and her voice shook. ‘I don’t! I don’t! I don’t!’
‘I know you don’t,’ he said gently. ‘That’s because you don’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to believe it myself. I do now. I can prove it. Do you think I’m so stupid as to say I can prove a thing when I can’t. Or don’t you believe me either?’
‘I don’t know what to believe,’ she said wildly. ‘Yes, I do. I do. I do know what to believe. I don’t believe Lorraine could be like that.’
‘Too lovely a person, too honest, too good, too true?’
‘Yes! Yes! That’s what I believe.’
‘That’s what I believed, too. That’s what I still believe.’
Her grip on his arms tightened and she looked at him almost beseechingly. ‘Please. Please don’t make fun of me.’
‘She’s being blackmailed.’
‘Blackmailed! Blackmailed! How could anyone blackmail Lorraine?’ She looked away, was silent for some seconds, then looked back again. ‘It’s something to do with Carlos, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Indirectly.’ He looked at her curiously. ‘How did you know that?’
‘Because she’s in love with him,’ Sarina said impatiently.
‘How do you know that?’ This time he was openly surprised.
‘Because I’m a woman.’
‘Ah, well, yes. I suppose that explains it.’
‘And because you had Captain Crni ask her about Carlos. But I knew before that. Anyone could see it.’
‘Here’s one who didn’t.’ He thought. ‘Well, hindsight, retrospect, yes. But I said only indirectly. Nobody would be stupid enough to use Carlos as a blackmail weapon. They’d find themselves with a double-edged sword in their hands. But, sure, he’s part of it.’
‘Well?’ She’d actually arrived at the stage where she had started shaking him, no mean feat with a person of Petersen’s bulk. ‘What’s the other part of it?’
‘I know, or I think I know, the other part of it. But I haven’t any proof.’
Tell me what you think.’
‘You think because she’s honest and good and true that she has led a blameless life, that she can’t possibly have any guilty secrets?’
‘Goon.’
‘I don’t think she’s got any guilty secrets either. Unless you call having an illegitimate child a guilty secret, which I don’t.’
She took her right hand away from his arm and touched her lips. She was shocked not by what he had said but because of its implications.
‘Carlos is a doctor.’ He sounded tired and, for the first time since she had met him, he looked tired. ‘He qualified in Rome. Lorraine lived with him during the time she was Jamie Harrison’s secretary. They have a son, aged two and a half. It’s my belief that he’s been kidnapped. I’ll find out for sure when I have a knife at Cipriano’s throat.’
She stared at him in silence. Two tears trickled slowly down her cheeks.
EIGHT
At nine o’clock the next morning Jablanica looked so much like an idealized Christmas postcard that it was almost unreal, untrue in its breathtaking beauty. The snow had stopped, the clouds were gone, the sun shone from a clear pale blue sky and the air on the windless slopes, where the trees hung heavy with snow, was crisp and pellucid and very cold. It required only the sound of sleigh-bells to complete the illusion. But peace on earth and goodwill to all men were the last considerations in the thoughts of those gathered around the breakfast table that morning.
Petersen, his chin on his hand and his coffee growing cold before him, was obviously lost in contemplation. Harrison, who showed remarkably little after-effects from the considerable amount of wine he had found necessary to drown his chagrin and bring himself once more face to face with reality, said: ‘A penny for them, Peter, my boy.’
‘My thoughts? They’d be worth a lot more than that to the people I’m thinking about. Not, may I add hastily, that they include any of those sitting around the table.’
‘And not only do you look pensive,’ Harrison went on, ‘but I detect a slight diminution in the usual early morning ebullience, the sparkling cheer. You found sleep hard to come by? The change of beds, perhaps?’
‘As I sleep in a different bed practically every night in life that would hardly be a factor, otherwise I’d be dead by this time. Fact is, I was up nearly all night, with either George or Ivan, in the radio room. You couldn’t possibly have heard it, but there was a long and violent thunderstorm during the night – that’s why we have cloudless skies this morning – and both transmission and reception were close on impossible.’
‘Ah! That explains it. Would it be in order to ask who you were talking to during the long watches of the night?’
‘Certainly. No secrets, no secrets.’ Harrison’s expression of disbelief was only fleeting and he made no comment. ‘We had, of course, to contact our HQ in Bihac and warn them of the impending attack. That, alone, took almost two hours.’
‘You should have used my radio,’ Michael said. ‘It’s got a remarkable range.’
‘We did. It was no better than the other.’
‘Oh. Then perhaps you should have used me. After all, I do know that equipment.’
‘Of course you do. But, then, our people in Bihac don’t know Navajo which is the only code you are familiar with.’
Michael looked at him, his mouth fallen slightly open. ‘How on earth did you know that? I mean, I’ve got no code books.’ He tapped his head. ‘It’s all up here.’
‘You sent a message just after Colonel Lunz and I had been talking to you. You may be a good radio operator, Michael, but otherwise you shouldn’t be allowed out without a minder.’
Sarina said: ‘Don’t forget I was there also.’
‘Two minders. I’ll bet you never even checked to see if the room was bugged.’
‘Good God!’ Michael looked at his sister. ‘Bugged! Did you – how could you have known we were going to stay -^
‘It could have been bugged. It wasn’t. George was listening on the balcony.’
‘George!’
‘You talked in plain language. George said it wasn’t any European language he’d ever heard. You had an American instructor. The Americans labour under the happy delusion that Navajo is unbreakable.’
‘Now you tell me,’ George said. He seemed in no way upset.
‘Sorry. Busy. I forgot.’
‘Peter’s expertise in espionage is matched only by his expertise in codes. The two go hand-in-glove. Makes up codes at the time. Breaks them, too. Remember he said the Germans had twice broken the Cetnik code. They didn’t. Peter gave them the information. Not that they know that. Nothing like spreading dissension among allies.’ • Harrison said: ‘How do you know the Germans didn’t monitor and break your transmission last night?’
‘Impossible. Only two people know my codes – me and the receiver. Never use the same code twice. You can’t break a code on a single transmission.’
‘That’s fine. But – not trying to be awkward, old boy – will this information be of any use to your Partisans? Won’t the Germans know that you’ve been kidnapped or disappeared or whatever and might pass this message on. If they did, surely they would change their plan of attack.’